Indie Games Nominated For Independent Games Festival Award

The Independent Games Festival (IGF), which honors the most influential, innovative and acclaimed projects in independent game development, has today revealed the finalists for its 21st annual awards ceremony. The IGF Awards will take place March 20th, 2019 at 6.30pm PT during the Game Developers Conference 2019, and will be hosted by Meg Jayanth, the award-winning writer of 80 Days, the acclaimed globetrotting interactive storytelling game and former IGF Award winner for Excellence in Narrative.

After an initial screening process overseen by more than 300 judges, over 500 entries for the 2019 IGF Awards were distributed to a diverse set of expert jurors from across the industry for final consideration. The juries for each individual category then selected the IGF finalists after playing, discussing and meticulously evaluating them.

Among the esteemed award nominees are a few that have received nominations in multiple categories, including most-nominated title Return of the Obra Dinn, the innovative and uniquely stylized murder mystery from Lucas Pope, creator of 2013’s acclaimed Papers, Please. Through the monochromatic perspective of an unnamed insurance adjuster from the East India Company, Return of the Obra Dinn has players investigating the deaths of a crew of sailors aboard a ghost ship, the Obra Dinn. The title has earned nominations for Excellence in Audio, Design, Visual Art, Narrative and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Other titles receiving multiple nominations in the 21st annual IGF include Do Not Feed The Monkeys, a unique digital voyeur simulator that calls on players to spy on characters to pry into their lives, as well the narrative-driven horror-tinged adventure game Paratopic, and the endless sandboarding adventure set against a beautiful and ever-changing natural landscape, Alto’s Odyssey.

Showcasing the breadth of games submitted this year, other notable multi-award nominees include Noita, the magical action rogue-lite set in a world where every pixel is physically simulated, Mirror Drop, the psychedelic 3D puzzle game where players maneuver a reflective sphere in a world full of mirrors, over-saturated colors and infinities, and the Internet-crawling adventure set in an alternate universe in the year 1999, Hypnospace Outlaw.

The winners of the IGF will be announced at the Independent Games Festival Awards, which takes place the evening of Wednesday, March 20th 2019 at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. The IGF Awards will immediately precede the Game Developers Choice Awards, which recognizes the best games of the year across all sections of video game development.

IGF Award winners will receive more than $50,000 of prizes in various categories, including the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Both the IGF Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremonies are available to attend for all GDC 2019 pass-holders, and will be livestreamed online once again via http://twitch.tv/gdc & other to-be-announced streaming outlets.